Art making approaches in support of the new art standards

Stepping into our 'standards and art making approaches' workshop last night Olivia Gude invites us to think of the new visual art standards as a discursive and potential space

Olivia's standards presentation posted on the NAEA site

Creating Surrealist drawings 
"Linger in the image, re-submerge, change the angle, no talking."

Jess' arm. This is not a Surrealist drawing but it's gorgeous to look at the contrasting lines and textures.

Paula drawing from the subconscious 

A gallery walk of teacher Surrealist images 

Spaces for Possibility 

Art Making Approaches/Curriculum Development 

prompt

With the introduction of the new CORE Art Standards there is less of an emphasis on formal art making approaches connected to the elements and principles. Olivia is helping us think through how to develop contemporary art curriculum around art making approaches such as the Surrealists, Mark Dion’s anthropological, re-enactments, kinetic movement, etc. These art making approaches invite us to step away from what is already known and familiar to us to envision art making approaches that support experimentation, and increased student autonomy. 

We’re asking you this year to create curriculum that takes into consideration the following factors:

1) Identify an art making approach that you haven’t worked with before. 

2) Generate concepts, values, vocabulary, open-ended questions around this art making approach. Look at the Art21 website for inspiration. 

3) Engagement question: What will your students do when you stop talking?

4) Create a teacher sample or pilot to share with the Spaces group mid-year for feedback, implement this new approach in the winter/spring in your classrooms. Share your final art-making approach in the spring with the whole group.

A collaged art making style - Trenton Doyle Hancock images are amassed over 15 years

Trenton Doyle Hancock 

The Former and the Ladder or Ascension and a Cinchin' 2012

Mark Dion uses an anthropological art making approach

First day of school and the Assemblage

Good morning lovely teachers,

I'm thinking of you on this first day of school. How quickly this first day comes around again.

As I hear back from you about your participation in the group this year, I've begun to think of our group as an assemblage - an open-ended collective, a non-totalizable sum, that has a vital force as each member makes a contribution to the group. These ideas are taken up by Jane Bennett in her book Vibrant Matter.  This concept of the assemblage is a productive way for us to conceive of our collective efforts together. The assemblage has a distinctive history of formation and usually has a finite life span according to Bennett. 

Assemblages are not governed by a central head. The "effects generated by an assemblage are emergent properties, emergent in that their ability to make something happen is distinct from the sum of the vital force of each materiality considered alone." (p. 24).  When we talk about materiality here, we are thinking about you, your students, and the materials in the art room as active forces that play off of each other. 

As a learning community/assemblage, we come together to act and make contributions toward something larger than our individual selves. I will continue to talk about these ideas on the blog and in our gatherings. This is a weighty good morning but why not start the school year off with some philosophical images and thoughts?

I'm thinking of you on this day and thinking about what we can be together as an assemblage.

Best wishes,

Kate

Lee Bontecou, Untitled,  the concept of non-totalizable sums

The concept of no recognizable central head

The possibility of emergence with no clear beginning or end

a

Sitting with "carpet woman" to experience closeness

Hello my friends,

In the past week Parvin Peyvandi, a visiting artist and art teacher from Vancouver, Canada has been visiting your schools (Ravenswood, Armstrong, Hancock, and Peck Elementary). Parvin is originally from Iran and brings a beautiful and vibrant connection to her own culture to the students and teachers of Chicago.

In her performance "carpet woman" she invites students to sit with her to consider the history of the Persian carpet and how a piece of fabric can bring us into proximity with each to other to experience closeness. This performative experience has allowed students to talk about racial segregation in Chicago; the act of sitting together to form a connection with each other; what a life long art practice can be like, and much more. Parvin is like a radiant flower in the center of the carpet, emanating love and openness. Like Marina Abramovic's performances which involve a sense of being in connection with each other, Parvin opens up the space for conversation and touching through materiality.

The invitation to join Parvin on the carpet is extended.

First grade students from Armstrong Elementary School are eager to sit close and touch the carpet and Parvin's hair. The little ones are open to more than just sitting. Touching is often a part of being together.

6th grade students at Ravenswood Elementary are considering their own cultural heritage. Parvin's visit comes at just the right time. There is much conversation around how people feel connected through sitting on the carpet. Some students are aware that there is segregation in Chicago and comment on the recent police brutality events in Baltimore. Parvin says as an artist she cannot control the actions of others but through this gesture of sitting together she hopes to bring people together to experience closeness.

Mature bodies, less room for sitting but still high school students at Hancock are more than willing to sit close for a conversation. I notice that the students of various ages hold their bodies differently on the carpet. The little ones fidget and wriggle to find a sense of comfort. The 6th graders hold their bodies with a sense of comportment. Their minds are open to many different associations - the carpet in Chicago extends all the way to Baltimore. In the high school, students are comfortable with being together but they are unaccustomed to sitting on the floor. From first grade to high school, these students have travelled great distances with their bodies. This performance is a beautiful connecting point for the bodies in proximity to each other over time. We never lose the sense for needing to be with each other. 

Student Reflective Writing

This ain't on any standardized test!

Curie HS Art 1 Students are doing reflective writing during their critique. That's right! Our students think and process and then think about their thinking! That's art education and we have to let the parents and administration know what we are doing in the classroom. (That is thinking deeply and reflecting throughout the creative process). I'm always surprised when others are surprised that art teachers do this. So many don't realize the depths we bring our students to.

Click on the link to go to our blog. There will soon be another post of some of the studies with the student writing attached. I regret I did not video the discussions. It is so hard to document and run the session at the same time! I need to get that equipment so I can set up the video camera and let it run on its own....

teachers after hours

Valerie Xanos
Curie HS

"Vibrant Matter" in the art room

"It is never we who affirm or deny something of a thing; 

it is the thing itself that affirms or denies something of itself in us." 

Baruch Spinoza, Short Tretise II

Hello my friends,

I visited Jeanne Walker's room today at Hancock High School. The art room was gorgeous and full of vibrant matter and possibilities. As I mentioned in my last blog post, I am reading about new materialism and post humanism. Now I look at this beautiful art room exploding with "thing power" and wonder what might these "things" be calling us to do?

Reinforcing the sculptural chairs with paper mache.

A non-chair related project involves these beautiful mannequin heads covered in gold leaf. The beauty of these materials cannot be captured by a photo. One has to feel the materiality of gold leaf.

This one seems to speak to me as a throne.

Recently I have been wondering, what if we were to re-conceive of the art room's materiality differently?  Jane Bennett who I mentioned in the last post says "'thing power' works because it's in the nature of our bodies to be susceptible to infusion, invasion, collaboration by or with other bodies." Are these "things" that are in the art room more than mere objects? How do they call to us? How do our bodies interact with a sense of inter corporality through the "things'" bodies? Our bodies and the bodies of "things" have a protective membrane and yet somehow these "things" become us or do we become them? They permeate us and we permeate them. 

In our Studio Night conversation yesterday several people spoke about the way in which school administrators cannot see the potential in the art room. So often the administrator is baffled by the "chaos" present in the art room. I think we could re-think what is actually going on in the art room through the concepts of vibrant matter and new materialism. I also want to share what Elizabeth Grosz has written in her book Chaos, territory, art. She says "the arts produce and generate intensity, that which directly impacts the nervous system and intensifies sensation." (2008, p. 3). So what if the outsider entering into this "chaos" is actually having a somatic experience where the material sensations in the room are so powerful they shut a person down? As visual artists we take for granted that materials speak to us and that perhaps "chaos" opens us up to new possibilities. 

These materials do indeed stimulate the body and produce new sensations, new ideas, new potentialities. How can we help others enter into this experience especially when students and teachers are in the midst of production/creation? This is time of great intensity. These are really exciting ideas to think about because they do produce real affects (overwhelm, claustrophobia, fear, longing) and real effects (low ratings on teacher evaluations due to a misunderstanding of what the art room does).

The materials collected for these chairs are indeed vibrant. I invite you all to consider these questions. What if we write a piece together and/or co-present at the NAEA next year in Chicago around these ideas? I am always honored to come into your exquisite spaces. Thank you.

Jeanne's students are working on these stunning sculptural chairs that invite people into safe spaces to have difficult conversations. These chairs/sculptures will be installed outside of the school for a performance/celebration on May 12th from 4-6 p.m. for a project called On the table.  A cookout and conversations will be held to inaugurate the chairs in the space and feature the opening of the safe spaces art and sculpture exhibition. Please come to 56th and Kosner (near Pulaski) for this special event!

new materialism and post humanism

I attended the American Educational Research Association's annual conference April 16-20th in Chicago. As you can imagine there were thousands and thousands of educational researchers from around the world milling about like particles of matter beautifully collected and diffused at the same time.  

The conference topics were as diverse as the people. I tended to gravitate towards arts-based research, gender/queer studies, social justice and experimental research sessions.

By Sunday I had fallen into a crowd of people who were pursuing research in the areas of new materialism and post humanism. I had not yet encountered these ideas and found it really thrilling to come into contact with these new concepts. I'm an incurable conceptualist! 

New materialism and post humanism addresses life beyond the human subject. We are so drawn to looking at our lives on this planet through the lens of the human subject that to imagine a different way of looking requires a radical alteration of thinking, being, feeling. How might we look at other perspectives beyond our own? I love this lecture by Jane Bennett on Artistry and Agency in a world of vibrant materiality. Here she is looking at hoarders and their "thing power". How many visual artists and art teachers love to collect things and what might these things be saying to us? How can we attune to things rather than humans? Bennett talks about some intriguing ideas with regards to hoarders. She says that hoarders find comfort in things as they have a longer mortality than humans. Perhaps this is a way for us to cope with what is unbearable - loss. She says the hoarder sees things as extensions of the "self." This a lovely ideas in terms of our attraction to objects. They call to us. 

Around ideas related to new materialism theorist Karen Barad suggests we turn our attention away from the human subject through a process of diffraction. Barad refers to Donna Haraways' concepts of diffraction in this interview: 

"As Donna says, “diffraction patterns record the history of interaction, interference, reinforcement, difference. Diffraction is about heterogeneous history, not about originals. Unlike reflections, diffractions do not displace the same elsewhere, in more or less distorted form, thereby giving rise to industries of [story-making about origins and truths]. Rather, diffraction can be a metaphor for another kind of critical consciousness.” What I was pointing out is the difference in the shift from geometrical optics, from questions of mirroring and sameness, reflexivity, where to see your image in the mirror there necessarily has to be a distance between you and the mirror. So there is a separation of subject and object, and objectivity is about mirror images of the world. And instead, the shift towards diffraction, towards differences that matter, is really a matter of what physicists call physical optics as compared to geometrical optics. . . By contrast, diffraction allows you to study both the nature of the apparatus and also the object. That is, both the nature of light and also the nature of the apparatus itself.  .  . Diffraction, understood using quantum physics, is not just a matter of interference, but of entanglement, an ethico-onto-epistemological matter. This difference is very important. It underlines the fact that knowing is a direct material engagement, a cutting together-apart, where cuts do violence but also open up and rework the agential conditions of possibility." (taken from New materialisms: interviews and cartographies).

Are you with me now? I'll write more soon. My head is swirling. 

Blog Time with You

Hi all!

I've missed blogging with all of you. I'm overwhelmed with too many projects (disadvantage of being an over-achiever). I also took on an overtime position, WHICH I WILL NEVER DO AGAIN!

Most of my work has been put up on class blogs and a class Facebook page. So I'll share those links with you here. Check them out. Not a lot of teacher reflection. It's the one thing I haven't had time to blog about. Trying to keep up with posting the projects. Gotta remedy that.

Guerrilla Art class period 1
Recently posted about their They will soon be posting about their new project "Stereotypes vs. True Self"

Guerrilla Art Class period 4
They just finished a massive project done with the MCA Teacher Partner Initiative. We worked with artist-in-residence Lee Blalock to create an original film. We are still blogging about it, so you can see the whole process. The film was screened at the MCA theater. Been tweeted about and soon to be up on the MCA Blog and Facebook pages.

Art 1 and MYP/IB classes
I've been experimenting with a new curriculum that focuses on experimentation, exploration, artistic process, and our theme of DISCOMFORT. Some of the IB class posts are more studio art related.
Also on this blog will be the research I've compiled from the art teacher delegate trip to Finland, so stay tuned.

Check out our new Facebook community page: Ms. Xanos' Art Classes. It's one simple place to go to where various pictures and news will be posted. All the blogs will be linked on that page too.

Surprise - 4th grade integration

I’m currently co-teaching a 4th grade art integration class with their classroom teacher. The class read the book “Running Out of Time”, which deals with the main character learning that her world is not at all what it seems, and being betrayed by someone she trusts deeply. The main themes for the unit are Surprise and Deceit, and we started the unit by trying some new centers (I teach TAB/choice, so the students are used to having various centers available):

• India Ink straw blowing, and then finding pictures in the patterns
• Optical illusions - b/w checker drawings, and drawings with parallel lines that curve over a shape
• “Creature Collages” - photomontage with the goal of making an animal or figure

Students also answered a short questionnaire to help generate ideas for their final work:

1. A time in your life when something happened unexpectedly:

2. A situation that turned out differently than you expected:

3. A friend or family member surprised you, or did something surprising:  

4. Have you ever been afraid to find something out? What was it?

After they filled out the questionnaire, they talked in pairs about the answer they found the most interesting or liked the most. They also spent class time making sketches about the situation, and we emphasized not having to make realistic images of the story they were portraying.

We spent half of another class talking about various artworks that were either abstract or non-representational, or had lots of layering and details. The idea was to look at artwork that held a surprise, or that you had to look at closely to notice small details.

Students have been working on their artwork for one class period. The had a choice of any 2D medium available in the room, though they need to combine two of the available options before they finish.. Choices are: India ink, chalk pastel, all drawing materials, and collage materials/magazines.  We will spend part of a future class having students pair up and do a simple feedback and sharing exercise. I’m very excited about what they’re doing, and especially that students are creating more abstract work from some very concrete ideas (their life experiences). Their classroom teacher is planning on having the students write extended artist statements/reflections on their finished work as well.

Photos of work in progress. Some students decided to start with india ink straw blowing as the beginning of their work.

Looks of surprise:

This student has a story about his family being fooled by someone, and his drawing is depicting how he wished the place it happened at had been destroyed:

Memories of a dark night (the right is the light of a streetlamp she remembers):

Story of a dog (on the right) eating something it wasn't supposed to. 

She found the image of the dog after doing India ink straw blowing:

Navigating loss and longing

We have to work very hard to bring forward our ideas and feelings in writing sometimes. I've asked a number of you to write on the blog and you seem interested and then the rest of life takes over. I absolutely feel the same way. One way I come into my writing is through very specific affective experiences. What does it feel like to visit your schools? What does it feel like to experience an exhibition, etc.? And so I will talk about two specific instances of experience around the topic of loss and longing because that is the curricular theme within our group that is really resonating with me personally.

Experience 1

I went to the MCA to rehearse my pecha kucha presentation for the NAEA curriculum slam. While I was at the museum I visited two exhibitions, Doris Salcedo and Body Doubles. When I'm in the museum I look for a piece of work to move me in unexpected ways. I was prepared to feel moved by Salcedo's work around loss and mourning through her reconstructed objects. I felt the weight of dead bodies in the cumbersome tables that we had to navigate to get into the exhibition. These tables felt insurmountable and difficult. I thought,  get out of my way tables, but the whole point was that I had to walk through, in and around these objects/dead bodies. We must go through our grief.

This piece translates loosely to "silent prayer" and emerged out of a research process that involved looking at gang violence in LA. Salcedo "noted how victims and perpetrators of gang violence often share socioeconomic circumstances that lead to conditions of increased violence. They are often viewed as lesser in the eyes of broader society. The work was also made in response to Salcedo's experience of mass graves she visited with grieving mothers in Columbia who were searching for their missing sons."- MCA catalogue notes

Doris Salcedo, Plegaria Muda

The piece that moved me in an unexpected way was a film by Wu Tsang within the Body Doubles exhibition based on a Japanese book/movie. I felt caught off guard by the absolutely real sentiments that came out of the actors mouths. While at times they seemed cliche ("say you love me"), Tsang is playing with the Spanish telenovela genre in this film, other times the words seemed piercingly true. And perhaps this is how we play our lives too, melodrama mixed with feelings of true loss, longing and desire. It would be interesting to see how students feel about this film as it plays with queerness and doubleness. Queerness isn't just the act of being gay but also the idea of otherness.

Experience 2

Yesterday I visited Deni Drinkwater's 8th graders at Edison. I really enjoyed sitting with Deni during her prep to review our parallel histories and to consider what a contemporary art curriculum can look like. Many members of our group have overlaps in where you studied, and who you student taught with, etc. You have a strange sort of ancestral lineage. We should map it some time. You would be surprised.

I was moved by a conversation with an 8th grade male student. We sat at the computer and talked about Mark Bradford, hurricane Katrina and the possibility of not getting into a selective enrollment high school. He got into Northside. I said, "What would you do if you didn't get into one of these schools?" He said, "I never thought I wouldn't". I was really stunned to think about how we cannot be fully prepared for the way loss, longing and discomfort creep up on us. What happens when everything that we thought would happen falls apart? I trust that this student will do well at Northside and yet there is no way to be fully prepared for what might come to us in the way of loss and longing. Our students represent a kind of potential and perhaps this is what makes teaching so appealing. We are witness to student's potential everyday. I wonder, how do we attend to our potential, loss, and longing as teachers?

I have to be prepared for the unexpected to move me, shake me and force me to attend to uncomfortable feelings. This is where our curricular themes and life start to over lap. Writing the curriculum is a process of navigating all these feelings.

Vinyl Label Tape

This is what's happening in my classroom currently. I'm working with the 'label's group and my 7th graders are currently working on their tape artwork on the floor. As you can see we are still in the progress of taping our labels down on the floor. Our goal is fill up the tiles.
My entire 7th grade (~140 students &once a week) picked a label that best describe who they are (no repeats!). With scissors and exacto knife students use vinyl 1" tape to mark down their identity.

Beth's questioning process

Below are some questions I thought of, I also did an activity this week. Thursday, I spoke to my students briefly about modern and conceptual art.  We talked about what the word modern might mean. We also brainstormed about what artists today might make art about, social issues, etc.  I also talked to them about Spaces for Possibility, how I am still a "learner", and the ultimate goal I had of pushing them to make more art from their own personal experiences, etc. I wanted to give them a framework of understanding of why we were doing these activities, etc.  I wanted to also let them know we would be "exploring and generating" different concepts /ideas, and there wasn't a definitive "ending project" to the project yet. They were intrigued!

Next, I had my grade 5 students write down a sound or 2 that makes them feel uncomfortable, then 2 sounds they associate with comfort. Initially they were not comfortable about having to divulge this private information, but I tried to frame the activity in a "safe" way, allowing them to submit their responses anonymously.  I encouraged them to be creative, and gave them a few extra unique/weird/visceral examples from my own personal experience. Next students randomly pulled their peer's responses out of a bowl, and took turns reading them aloud to class.  I thought this would be a lighter way to gather candid information, and encourage a dialogue, while allowing all students to participate without feeling too intimidated. The idea of anonymity really appealed to them and there was complete participation and engagement!  Every child was sitting on the edge of their seat, listening to responses, (probably listening for their own as well, and curious about WHO would read their's, and how it would be received). With the unique social dynamics of being a fifth grader, this was something they seemed fascinated with:) So The students were accepting of each other's ideas and overall it was a positive, dynamic, initial experience. I video taped part of it.

What is a sound that makes you uncomfortable?  What is one that makes you comfortable?

Do you fear anything that most people would think is irrational?

When was the last time you felt embarrassed?  What happened?

Name something you think is disgusting or gross. 

Who is the person you feel most comfortable around and why? 

Name a moment when you felt ashamed.

Name a part of yourself or something about yourself you are uncomfortable with.

When was the last time you cried?

Have you ever done something you weren't comfortable with because you felt like you had to? Why?

What color would you associate with comfort?  What about discomfort?

Ideas where comfort becomes uncomfortable-

Can you think of a time, like a party, a vacation or holiday, that was "supposed" to be a fun/joyous/comfortable event, that may have turned out to be an uncomfortable experience?

ideas of discomfort "transforming" to comfort...

When you are feeling upset, what makes you feel better?

Is there a part of yourself, or life that you used to feel uncomfortable with that you now embrace?

I thought of a few other ideas as well, but thought I would sit on them for a bit. Either way, I am going to connect last week's activities to this week's, in some way, just not sure how yet! Let me know if you have thoughts!

Continuing the conversation

At our last meeting in January Olivia gave us a sheet of paper titled "Some Glossary Language from Next Generation Standards Draft" with "Identifying Objectives" on the back. Here is a reiteration of what this sheet says for those who do not have a copy.

Some Glossary Language from Next Generation Standards Draft 
By Olivia Gude 2014.

Formal and conceptual vocabularies:
In diverse, multi-cultural, dynamic, globally aware contemporary societies, there is not a single set of words, ideas or terms that can sum up the many possibilities for understanding, making and interpreting works of art or design. Throughout the Next Generation Visual Arts standards, the term vocabularies is used to suggest that words to describe, plan and analyze works of art and design can be drawn from many traditional, modern, contemporary and continually emerging sources.

Artistic investigations
Making art is a form of inquiry and exploration. Through artistic investigations, artists go beyond illustrating pre-existing ideas or following directions; students generate fresh insights, new ways of seeing and knowing. Artistic practice: Processes, techniques, media, procedures, behaviors, actions and conceptual approaches by which an artist or designer makes work.

Contemporary artistic practice
Processes, techniques, media, procedures, behaviors, actions and conceptual approaches by which an artist or designer makes work using methods that , though they may be based on traditional practices, reflect changing contextual, aesthetic, material and technical possibilities of today's world. Examples of contemporary practices include such approaches as artwork made with appropriated images or materials, social practice artworks that involve audience, performance art, new media works, installations, and artistic interventions in public spaces. Art-making approaches: Diverse strategies and procedures by which artists initiate and pursue making a work.

Formal and structural characteristics
Range of attributes that can be used to describe works of art and design. Terms can be drawn from traditional, modern, and contemporary sources to create vocabularies that aid students in experiencing and perceiving the qualities of artworks, thus empowering them to create their own work and to appreciate and interpret the work of others. Vocabulary sets that will be useful to 21st century art educators and students include (but are not limited to) visual elements (such as line and color), principles of design (such as repetition and movement), postmodern terminology (such as appropriation and layering), words associated with academic drawing and painting (such as perspective and chiaroscuro), craft specific vocabulary, words associated with photography and film (such as depth of field, point of view, and shot), terms from new media (such as interactivity and responsiveness) as well as unexpected forms and structures created by the wider range of art making approaches used by artists in contemporary times.

Identifying Objectives

Conceptual

Aesthetic

Language

Technical

Perceptual

Behavioral


To see how this language gets played out in a lesson visit Olivia's Manual Barkin award speech and view pages 29-32.

I'm wondering if anyone is using this sheet to guide their process around creating their contemporary art curriculum? I'm also wondering how you are doing? It's a bit quiet out there now. I can imagine that you're all busy. I did get an email from one of our group members regarding how she led her students through an anonymous process of questioning. The students really enjoyed the process of answering a series of questions without knowing who wrote the questions. I'm curious how others have invited students into the questioning process. Where are you stuck and what is working for you?

I like this image of a high school student learning to type on a manual typewriter at the Guggenheim's education workshop. Students wanted to know where the screen was. Talk about discomfort. I bet they felt pretty strange typing on such a clunky machine.

We're going to meet on Thursday January 26th from 4:30-6:00 p.m. at the Center to share how our curriculum development is going. This is a time to research and share ideas. Come with questions, concerns and ideas.